I need to buy a notebook to record my thoughts these days. Because my life is so topsy-turvey and irregular, I'm noticing things and thinking about things from the wrong side of the railroad tracks now.
It is a very different type of neighborhood than what we are accustomed to. My house--and it is mine--is in the heart of a crowded, noisy neighborhood. I left here sixteen years ago. I can remember the happier days when I lived here before. The more settled days. Strangely, yesterday I needed a fork and without thinking about it, I reached for the drawer that had been my utinsil drawer when I lived here all those years ago. I told Ike that the mind is a miraculous organ than never ceases to amaze me. How could I possibly have so easily slipped back in time like that--to just automatically reach for something where it ought to be. The drawer is out for repair right now and there is just a hole there.
I have very few possessions here and I'm not settling in like a person would normally settle in. I have a few pieces of furniture that we dumped here when my father's house sold--the icky things nobody wanted that were too good to give away. I have this nice new carpet, light blue, that blends so nicely with gray walls, freshly painted, with stark white woodwork and this huge thirty year old yellowed and stained sectional couch. It seems my father's old English cottage style house house hid how aged it had become! And there is an old, old radio, 1940's at least, in a well made wooden cabinet that has seen better days. It makes a small table that is overpowered by a huge lamp that I think came from India. It is the most awkward real antique brass lamp. I can't imagine why. It is fat at the bottom and then tall and thin. And the shade is purely hidious--but nothing ready made is big enough for the lamp. Other than guitar equipment and a computer, that's all that is in my living and dining room.
Yesterday I finally broke down and bought a dish drain tray and a trash can. I was in the process of preparing to paint the kitchen cabinets when I made my unplanned move into the house. So, I adopted some old toy tubs of Ike's to use rather than fill the cabinets with stuff I'd have to take out when I paint. But time has been so restricted that I still haven't managed to begin to paint after nearly three weeks. So basically we are living out of boxes and suitcases as though any day we'll bug back to our own home.
I can't seem to get a decent meal together. For one, as renters never take care of things, the oven was so filthy that when I tried to fire it the first day or so that we were here, it stunk. I turned it off and we went out to eat while the house aired. I am not kidding you when I tell you that I scrubbed and soaked the burners for an entire week. So early on we ate out a lot. Oven cleaner was difficult to find the first week. I noticed that Wal Mart has it now that I finally managed to scrounge some up at an old southside grocery store. I sprayed the oven the other day and I haven't managed to get up the nerve to begin the nasty job of wiping it out. Tonight I tried to make chicken fajitas, but I'd forgotten that we don't have a jar of picante sauce--or any other kind of sauce, for that matter. And no spices! Although the fajitas tasted good, they weren't even remotely Mexican.
Well, a person gets tired of camping out all the time and living temprorily on what appears to be a more and more permanent basis. The time horizon for moving back home doesn't appear to be shrinking. Two suitcases and two tubs of kitchen goods is all I really have in the world now.
I miss my things!
I'm tired of watching the neighbors watch me. I know that my life has interested them immensely these past twenty-three years and they are afraid to ask me what the heck I'm doing back in the neighborhood. So they are both curious and distant. This end of the street is dominated by one family that owns two homes directly across the street. I never got along with the patriarch of the family. He used to stand in his garage and smoke and watch whatever I was doing through his small oval windows. They should be happy. I take good care of my grass. But they think I'm stupid to water it when the droughts come. On a good note, his grandson was visiting the other day and hailed me from the other side of the street. So we hollered back and forth, catching up on the decade or so since I last saw him. He must have been eight or so when I bought this house. If you ask me, he's the best one of the bunch.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Six Weird Things mime:
Not that I am popular enough anymore to actually be tagged! But I will accept Father Jake's general challenge:
Six Weird Things Mime
According to the rules I must:
1. Reveal six weird things about yourself on your blog, and
2. Tag six people to do the same.
The problem isn't coming up with six weird things, it is in admitting to them!
1. We talk for Mr. Dickens (Ike and I) and we have both fallen into a "Dickie talk" habit where we use his "voice" for nearly everything. We are losing our inhibitions and sometimes even talk like him in public. It is amazing how influential one little six-and-one-half-pound dog can be! We also have voices for each of our other animals, especially Ms. Squeaky because she always has a comment and she is so sophisticated. Naturally, for her we employ a squeaky voice.
2. I love open windows and if the weather is anywhere within the comfort zone, give or take twenty degrees, I open all that I can. I love curtains blowing in and out in the breeze.
3. I completely freeze when it comes to writing something on a greeting card or thank you note. I can jot something down on a bit of paper in no time at all. I destroy more cards in the making than ever manage to get into the mail. If I want to send out twenty-five Christmas cards, I must begin with fifty. I am especially bad about making mistakes while addressing envelopes. (That's just an example. I have no idea how many I send out in a good year.)
4. I am a night person, like Jake. I love the wee hours of the morning when all others are resting and it is intensely quiet in the house. It is my best time for pursuing the things I love doing the most, especially reading and writing. I have, however, noticed that the rest of the world likes to be active during the daytime and makes a regular habit of hounding those of us who are night-owls.
5. I am a daydreamer through and through. My mind is rarely on the task at hand or planning my day. It makes me absent-minded about daily duties and responsibilities. I've never successfully created any system that can overcome my tendency to forget what I need to do (work avoidance). A notebook is sitting on the couch next to me with three headings: To-do, needs and honey-do's, but the columns are all empty. For a brief time in my life, I successfully kept a To-Do list, but I've never managed to reinstate that desirable habit. My tendency to daydream is also my bane as a writer because I never have as much time for the writing as I do for story creation--and even revision that I do in my head!--and my story grows and morphs faster than I can get it written, leaving me with a mess I can't rectify.
6. I'm a closet health nut. Nobody would know it if they watched me. I read all food labels and I worry about any ingredient that doesn't have a common name, like salt. The more natural and less processed it is, the more likely I am to consume it. But that includes things like real butter. I only use real sugar. I love physical activity of all kinds, but hate intentional exercise. Give me a game of tennis any day! I'll walk for miles if I don't think of it as exercise--but the sheer maddening intensity with which I do everything makes focusing on exercise a total drag, second by second. I like healthy shoes or, rather, I hate cramped toes. I'm no slave of fashion when clothing binds or constrains.
Six people! Carolyn, Derek, Jim (I've never seen Jim participate in a meme), Norma, David.
Six Weird Things Mime
According to the rules I must:
1. Reveal six weird things about yourself on your blog, and
2. Tag six people to do the same.
The problem isn't coming up with six weird things, it is in admitting to them!
1. We talk for Mr. Dickens (Ike and I) and we have both fallen into a "Dickie talk" habit where we use his "voice" for nearly everything. We are losing our inhibitions and sometimes even talk like him in public. It is amazing how influential one little six-and-one-half-pound dog can be! We also have voices for each of our other animals, especially Ms. Squeaky because she always has a comment and she is so sophisticated. Naturally, for her we employ a squeaky voice.
2. I love open windows and if the weather is anywhere within the comfort zone, give or take twenty degrees, I open all that I can. I love curtains blowing in and out in the breeze.
3. I completely freeze when it comes to writing something on a greeting card or thank you note. I can jot something down on a bit of paper in no time at all. I destroy more cards in the making than ever manage to get into the mail. If I want to send out twenty-five Christmas cards, I must begin with fifty. I am especially bad about making mistakes while addressing envelopes. (That's just an example. I have no idea how many I send out in a good year.)
4. I am a night person, like Jake. I love the wee hours of the morning when all others are resting and it is intensely quiet in the house. It is my best time for pursuing the things I love doing the most, especially reading and writing. I have, however, noticed that the rest of the world likes to be active during the daytime and makes a regular habit of hounding those of us who are night-owls.
5. I am a daydreamer through and through. My mind is rarely on the task at hand or planning my day. It makes me absent-minded about daily duties and responsibilities. I've never successfully created any system that can overcome my tendency to forget what I need to do (work avoidance). A notebook is sitting on the couch next to me with three headings: To-do, needs and honey-do's, but the columns are all empty. For a brief time in my life, I successfully kept a To-Do list, but I've never managed to reinstate that desirable habit. My tendency to daydream is also my bane as a writer because I never have as much time for the writing as I do for story creation--and even revision that I do in my head!--and my story grows and morphs faster than I can get it written, leaving me with a mess I can't rectify.
6. I'm a closet health nut. Nobody would know it if they watched me. I read all food labels and I worry about any ingredient that doesn't have a common name, like salt. The more natural and less processed it is, the more likely I am to consume it. But that includes things like real butter. I only use real sugar. I love physical activity of all kinds, but hate intentional exercise. Give me a game of tennis any day! I'll walk for miles if I don't think of it as exercise--but the sheer maddening intensity with which I do everything makes focusing on exercise a total drag, second by second. I like healthy shoes or, rather, I hate cramped toes. I'm no slave of fashion when clothing binds or constrains.
Six people! Carolyn, Derek, Jim (I've never seen Jim participate in a meme), Norma, David.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Dogma*
There is considerable contention within Christianity and among its divisions over certain aspects of the faith, very old aspects, such as dogma and doctrine. The legacy of the reformation has created a body of Christians who loathe the very idea and like to point fingers and declare their view to be authoritatively based on scripture alone. It is one of those contentious little details that I perceive as a fallacy, one of those hypocritical acts of finger pointing that people of all makes and models are prone to do.
A lot of that dogma has to do with creating the right atmosphere. By that I mean to include all that is within the scope of the spiritual Christian and faith. There are many ways to do that, perhaps. Some people may find the right atmosphere sitting on a hilltop watching the sun set. In other words, the essentials can be stripped down to their bare essentials but there will be a body of knowledge and of practice that the Christian accepts and understands. Whether it is the Church itself that has determined these essentials or a protestant denomination or a single individual it remains technically dogma to those who follow it.
Atonement is a biggy! There is a confusing array of potential doctrines, but as with so many things of faith we can poke holes in all of them or they all fall short of explaining exactly what happened. My own doctrine, if you will pardon me, is that God perceived that we humans wouldn’t be able to accept forgiveness unless we understood that a price had been paid and so it was arranged. I don’t think God needed to sacrifice his only son. God can do anything. It simply reflects the story of Abraham and builds on the ultimate potential sacrifice for the satisfaction of sin. So, our Lord died to save a bunch of goats. *Said with a smile, of course!* Actually, it is a whole lot more complex and I don’t know how to write it. I don’t like rotten tomatoes, either.
At any rate, when we approach God in prayer, we know that we have been washed clean and we know that it isn’t something that we did. It makes God more approachable and at the same time still instrumental to our well-being. So our knowledge of sin creates a right state where pride has died and humility reigns.
I don't think it is ever in believing any thing about God (Christ). I think it is in believing IN, or having faith in Christ, the person. Faith being complete trust. Contemplation requires emptying ourselves, the "Cloud of Forgetting". It isn’t in knowing the right stuff. It is not thinking the right thoughts. It is rather like not thinking at all. It is an act of opening ourselves up to the one we call on. That's why so many find the foreshortened Jesus prayer so effective. Some of us, however have overactive minds. We are so totally self-absorbed that it takes more to bring us into his presence.
In the Church, the ancients used song (chant) psalmody and prayer, reading and contemplating and praying the scriptures to empty the mind in an active way. Or rather, as a means of losing self-awareness. I say I am a reader and I can read my way into the right state. St. Mary was often depicted with a Bible on her lap as a contemplative early on. That was her as role model.
Rituals tell us when God is active among us so that we are more open to his presence and accepting. It isn't that God isn't present at all times, but that we need help sometimes in opening ourselves up to his presence. People may reject those rituals, but they replace them with other rituals they don't call rituals but they still believe that God meets them in their anti-rituals.
An example of such a ritual would be the requirement of the Fundamentalists that baptism is only done after a person has repented of the sin and accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It would be by submersion only and infant baptism is not considered either valid or possible. To claim that this is not a ritual would be ridiculous. To claim that it is not a tradition would be equally ridiculous. It has become both for them in their practice of faith. Thus the hypocrisy! But it serves the same purpose. Almost.
Splitting hairs over a word is ridiculous. The scriptures, especially the Epistles, are full of what we are to do and what we are not to do, of what we are to believe and where we might err. To claim that dogma is an invention of later days is a waste of effort! Official dogma was mankind’s effort to set into concrete something they were afraid somebody else might come along and change. Note that I like rock and concrete for their very concreteness.
Find God wherever you can. I find God in my garden, in the pefection of his creation as in the moist cool earth in spring or the opacity of a flower petal. I find God in the dark of night when I am alone and afraid and he calms me. I find God in an infants face, in the trickle of water from a rock, in a bird's song from a treetop. And one night in Holy Week, I left the Church with an unsatisfied feeling only to find what I was searching for in the midnight blue sky dominated by the full moon.
It is not anything ABOUT God, it is not "right belief" or "right doctrine." God is not in a place such as a church building while not being outside its doors. God is not in a cross and he certainly is not within the covers of a book or at least no more so than he is in a handful of dirt (the very rocks would cry aloud). God is Spirit. It is all about seeking God and where he can be found and listening to God and hearing God--an active, living presence.
The problem, I think, is that if I tell you that the only way that you can seek God is to do it my way. God is so much bigger than that!
A lot of that dogma has to do with creating the right atmosphere. By that I mean to include all that is within the scope of the spiritual Christian and faith. There are many ways to do that, perhaps. Some people may find the right atmosphere sitting on a hilltop watching the sun set. In other words, the essentials can be stripped down to their bare essentials but there will be a body of knowledge and of practice that the Christian accepts and understands. Whether it is the Church itself that has determined these essentials or a protestant denomination or a single individual it remains technically dogma to those who follow it.
Atonement is a biggy! There is a confusing array of potential doctrines, but as with so many things of faith we can poke holes in all of them or they all fall short of explaining exactly what happened. My own doctrine, if you will pardon me, is that God perceived that we humans wouldn’t be able to accept forgiveness unless we understood that a price had been paid and so it was arranged. I don’t think God needed to sacrifice his only son. God can do anything. It simply reflects the story of Abraham and builds on the ultimate potential sacrifice for the satisfaction of sin. So, our Lord died to save a bunch of goats. *Said with a smile, of course!* Actually, it is a whole lot more complex and I don’t know how to write it. I don’t like rotten tomatoes, either.
At any rate, when we approach God in prayer, we know that we have been washed clean and we know that it isn’t something that we did. It makes God more approachable and at the same time still instrumental to our well-being. So our knowledge of sin creates a right state where pride has died and humility reigns.
I don't think it is ever in believing any thing about God (Christ). I think it is in believing IN, or having faith in Christ, the person. Faith being complete trust. Contemplation requires emptying ourselves, the "Cloud of Forgetting". It isn’t in knowing the right stuff. It is not thinking the right thoughts. It is rather like not thinking at all. It is an act of opening ourselves up to the one we call on. That's why so many find the foreshortened Jesus prayer so effective. Some of us, however have overactive minds. We are so totally self-absorbed that it takes more to bring us into his presence.
In the Church, the ancients used song (chant) psalmody and prayer, reading and contemplating and praying the scriptures to empty the mind in an active way. Or rather, as a means of losing self-awareness. I say I am a reader and I can read my way into the right state. St. Mary was often depicted with a Bible on her lap as a contemplative early on. That was her as role model.
Rituals tell us when God is active among us so that we are more open to his presence and accepting. It isn't that God isn't present at all times, but that we need help sometimes in opening ourselves up to his presence. People may reject those rituals, but they replace them with other rituals they don't call rituals but they still believe that God meets them in their anti-rituals.
An example of such a ritual would be the requirement of the Fundamentalists that baptism is only done after a person has repented of the sin and accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It would be by submersion only and infant baptism is not considered either valid or possible. To claim that this is not a ritual would be ridiculous. To claim that it is not a tradition would be equally ridiculous. It has become both for them in their practice of faith. Thus the hypocrisy! But it serves the same purpose. Almost.
Splitting hairs over a word is ridiculous. The scriptures, especially the Epistles, are full of what we are to do and what we are not to do, of what we are to believe and where we might err. To claim that dogma is an invention of later days is a waste of effort! Official dogma was mankind’s effort to set into concrete something they were afraid somebody else might come along and change. Note that I like rock and concrete for their very concreteness.
Find God wherever you can. I find God in my garden, in the pefection of his creation as in the moist cool earth in spring or the opacity of a flower petal. I find God in the dark of night when I am alone and afraid and he calms me. I find God in an infants face, in the trickle of water from a rock, in a bird's song from a treetop. And one night in Holy Week, I left the Church with an unsatisfied feeling only to find what I was searching for in the midnight blue sky dominated by the full moon.
It is not anything ABOUT God, it is not "right belief" or "right doctrine." God is not in a place such as a church building while not being outside its doors. God is not in a cross and he certainly is not within the covers of a book or at least no more so than he is in a handful of dirt (the very rocks would cry aloud). God is Spirit. It is all about seeking God and where he can be found and listening to God and hearing God--an active, living presence.
The problem, I think, is that if I tell you that the only way that you can seek God is to do it my way. God is so much bigger than that!
Monday, April 02, 2007
It is rather nice, I thought.
I sat in the car and gazed out the window at the broken clouds above. They were still an aggravating dark gray, but blue sky burst brightly through every opening. I can think again. My brain isn't functioning as well as usual yet. In fact, I am not even in the clear as far as my health is concerned, but I am improving. My vision is improving too. The interesting thing about that is that my glasses seem to make my vision worse now.
Day before yesterday I could remember things. I could even regret my lack of forsight in leaving my notebook at home when I left for the two hour trip to Sapulpa to drop Ike off for his drum and bugle corp camp. I had thoughts and memories that were worth jotting down for later contemplation and expansion. Yesterday, on the trip to retrieve Ike, for the first time in a very long time I was contemplating faith in a way that I haven't in close to a year. I bored my husband with my thoughts. I even told him that it was a shame I didn't have my notebook because I knew that the inspiration would be gone before I arrived home.
I had a friend once. He was one of my first Internet friends and he was a writer. He had developed terrible allergies that made life impossible, as it turned out. This had happened overnight, so to speak. Life had been good for himself and his family, he had a good job and they were building a dream vacation home--and then with the first attack everything went down the tubes. He could no longer work. His illness required a change of environment to the dry desert southwest. They had to sell their nice home and they bought a camper rig. From then on they made their meager living as campground hosts. Then one day he had an asthma attack. It galls me to think that what stood between himself and life was the lack of a decent vehicle to get him to the hospital. When he finally got to a medical care facility it was too late.
The Internet is an amazing and wonderful thing. Isn't it? And so I met Colin and I will remember him as long as I live. I enjoyed his writing so much. He had a great sense of humor and I would jump at a chance to purchase his novel. Sadly, I don't think that it was ever finished. He sent chapters to me and shared it as it grew. Even though he was trailer-bound, so to speak, he did get some articles published in a hunting magazine. What an imagination!
Well, I have found out that my makeup is contaminated with whatever this is. It contaminates everything moist. It could well be airborne. I won't know if it is the water for at least another week.
Last Monday I very carefully followed the exact instructions for taking the water sample. I don't mind telling the truth here at all. I took it down to the UPS Store. I explained to them that it was a water sample and had to arrive at the lab within 20 hours. I asked them for their best recommendation for getting it there on time. I had to pay not only for overnight shipping, but a special fee for rush delivery and the total came to $50.00. That was over and above the $20.00 fee for the lab itself. Saturday, when I picked up my mail, the lab had sent another vial and a rejection slip. They had not received the sample until Wednesday. Two days! Two days to get it to a city I could drive to in two hours. So for $70.00 and a week of waiting for an answer, I have nothing. Plus I have this misery of living in less than ideal circumstances at more than normal expense because I don't have a refrigerator and I have no washing facilities.
My time horizon expands. Life is abnormal and uncomfortable. I hate to bore any readers that may find my blog, but it is currently a fixation of mine.
Day before yesterday I could remember things. I could even regret my lack of forsight in leaving my notebook at home when I left for the two hour trip to Sapulpa to drop Ike off for his drum and bugle corp camp. I had thoughts and memories that were worth jotting down for later contemplation and expansion. Yesterday, on the trip to retrieve Ike, for the first time in a very long time I was contemplating faith in a way that I haven't in close to a year. I bored my husband with my thoughts. I even told him that it was a shame I didn't have my notebook because I knew that the inspiration would be gone before I arrived home.
I had a friend once. He was one of my first Internet friends and he was a writer. He had developed terrible allergies that made life impossible, as it turned out. This had happened overnight, so to speak. Life had been good for himself and his family, he had a good job and they were building a dream vacation home--and then with the first attack everything went down the tubes. He could no longer work. His illness required a change of environment to the dry desert southwest. They had to sell their nice home and they bought a camper rig. From then on they made their meager living as campground hosts. Then one day he had an asthma attack. It galls me to think that what stood between himself and life was the lack of a decent vehicle to get him to the hospital. When he finally got to a medical care facility it was too late.
The Internet is an amazing and wonderful thing. Isn't it? And so I met Colin and I will remember him as long as I live. I enjoyed his writing so much. He had a great sense of humor and I would jump at a chance to purchase his novel. Sadly, I don't think that it was ever finished. He sent chapters to me and shared it as it grew. Even though he was trailer-bound, so to speak, he did get some articles published in a hunting magazine. What an imagination!
Well, I have found out that my makeup is contaminated with whatever this is. It contaminates everything moist. It could well be airborne. I won't know if it is the water for at least another week.
Last Monday I very carefully followed the exact instructions for taking the water sample. I don't mind telling the truth here at all. I took it down to the UPS Store. I explained to them that it was a water sample and had to arrive at the lab within 20 hours. I asked them for their best recommendation for getting it there on time. I had to pay not only for overnight shipping, but a special fee for rush delivery and the total came to $50.00. That was over and above the $20.00 fee for the lab itself. Saturday, when I picked up my mail, the lab had sent another vial and a rejection slip. They had not received the sample until Wednesday. Two days! Two days to get it to a city I could drive to in two hours. So for $70.00 and a week of waiting for an answer, I have nothing. Plus I have this misery of living in less than ideal circumstances at more than normal expense because I don't have a refrigerator and I have no washing facilities.
My time horizon expands. Life is abnormal and uncomfortable. I hate to bore any readers that may find my blog, but it is currently a fixation of mine.